WATER BOTTLE—waste on the wayside

from 100 MINIATURES . . .

(79) Consonance in Music is like measured rhyme
in the rhetorical Arts:—We desire and are comforted
by smooth, even, regular sounds, and a harmonious
embracing of similar movements. We can go too far,
however, as monotonous periodicity becomes the norm,
and we get fat and lazy on too much sugar and cream.

Dissonance in Music is like violence in the literary
Arts:—We want grit, edge, reality. Again, this can
go too far, as hypertension becomes habit, and we
rigidly stare down dangerous streets full of nothing
but barbed wire and shards.

Balance between the two? Observe the marvelous
middle way of natural language, where soft, sensuous
vowels dance arm in arm with the consonant’s strong,
persistent—noisy drum.

COMMENTARY ON (79) . . .

This problem of the balance of vowel and consonant,
of harmony and dissonance, is related to a whole host
of other primary problems in aesthetics.
The key term here is complementarity.
Or rather, the loss of complementarity.

It is also related to rational and irrational number, and the
linear and non-linear mathematics of the description
of the shape of change—think of water in flowing
movement—from smooth laminar surface to the wonderful
chaos of turbulent, rushing, whitewater.

And, of course, most importantly, we must first thoroughly
grasp the difference between what I call mere "complicatedness,"
or the unnecessarily convoluted and difficult, and the true
richness of natural complexity. With this comes
the insight, perhaps, that simplicity and complexity, just like vowel
and consonant, are not in any way at odds with one another, but rather
two inseparable phases of one necessarily undivided cycle.

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